


All These Dark Places

by 401



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Chronic Pain, Claustrophobia, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Bucky Barnes, Sexual Repression, Shower Sex, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-14 18:11:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13595571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/401/pseuds/401
Summary: Bucky is scared of a lot of things.





	1. Heights

**Author's Note:**

> Each chapter is named with one of Bucky's fears.

Bucky’s face stung with the whipping of wind. He ignored the vertigo as he looked down at the street below him. The sounds of car horns and voices were faint from his perch, giving his situation another layer of surrealism. The air conditioning unit next to him kicked on, making his voice catch in his throat as he stepped closer to the edge of the roof, his boots crunching a little on the concrete. The vertigo intensified, forcing him to clasp his hand over his mouth to quell a retch.  The hammering of his heart was no longer ignorable. It was a dramatic metronome in the back of his mind, a sick kind of internal accompaniment to the scene playing out in front of him.

Suicide had been a glowing exit sign in some of the deepest corridors of his brain for a while. It waited in the background until its presence had become casual. Something small and sickly in the back of his head that grew into a hulking, suffocating darkness that made endless promises. It promised to make the pain stop, it promised to end the loneliness, but most of all, it promised him some control.

“I didn’t think I’d ever catch you this high up by choice.”

He wheeled around at the voice, steadying himself, one foot down from the ledge.

“You are _everywhere,_ ” Bucky huffed in slight annoyance, staring at the rain-soaked Captain incredulously.

Steve shrugged.

“I have nothing better to do. I retired, you know,” He muttered, looking down at his drenched shoes.

Bucky did not reply, instead opting to sit himself down on the ledge of the roof. The chill in the air cut through the thin protection that his hoodie was offering, making him shiver. He clasped his hands in front of him to disguise it.

“You should, too,” Steve proposed, sitting down next to him, mirroring his position with his elbows on his knees.

Bucky breathed a shaky sigh. Steve’s presence was _burning._ The man seemed to give off light, heat, something. Something. Something Bucky assumed that he lacked. Nothing else could feel like this, nothing besides fraught need.

“I can’t retire from this. This isn’t something I can walk away from,” Bucky whispered.

The wind and rain swallowed his voice and plastered his hair to his face. The shivering became noticeable. Steve shrugged off his jacket, pushing it in his direction. Guilt coiled in Bucky’s stomach as he put it on. There was something in Steve’s expression that told him he did not have a choice in the matter.

“Bucky,” He sighed, “You don’t belong to _anyone_ , anymore. You can turn all of this over right now, everything can stop.”

Bucky turned back to the skyline and the distracting hum of the city below them. His senses prickled with it all. The cold, the wet, the warm cologne smell of Steve’s coat, the throbbing pain in his shoulder where the metal met the flesh, poorly maintained and dragging on his muscles. He closed his eyes so that he could at least shut out the light, control something when his mind felt like a beehive.

“Where am I supposed to go, Steve?” He mumbled.

“Anywhere but here. Please.”  


It seemed like it was Steve’s turn to be fraught. His voice seemed pregnant with an emotion that Bucky knew. Desperation.

“Bucky. Please.”

He nodded, stepping away from the edge of the rooftop and turning back to face Steve.

“Where are we going?” Bucky asked quietly.

“Home.”

 

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Warmth

“I pictured it different,” Bucky frowned, looking over Steve’s apartment.

It was tidy, for one. Bucky wondered if that was a new trait of Steve’s, or one he had just forgotten. There was a bookshelf in the far corner of the living room, organised by title with a bookend shaped like an elephant on the top shelf. The walls were mostly plain, broken up by photo frames in some places and dents in others. Bucky knew they had probably been punched in but he chose not to pursue that suspicion. Hypocrisy was not something he was inclined to.

“It’s home, I guess. For now,” Steve shrugged, “I wanted more of crash pad than something too permanent. The rent is crazy around here.”  


“As bad as Brooklyn?” Bucky chuckled.

Steve blew out an incredulous sigh and shook his head.

“Ooh, nowhere near,” He laughed, “Rumour has it you can pay your deposit in trafficked organs over there.”

Bucky grinned, feeling the somewhat forced action pulling at his mouth, forming it into a shape that was both alien and nostalgic.

“Do you have clothes in there?” Steve asked, gesturing to the duffle bag that Bucky had looped over his right shoulder.

“Some, but nothing that isn’t combat gear,” He admitted, “I don’t sleep enough to waste food money on pyjamas.”  


Steve sighed and nodded. There was a tense moment between them where they both took in the situation that was arising.

Steve battled with his happiness, reminding himself that Bucky’s return was a bittersweet one. He wanted him back, endlessly and unequivocally, but where there was want, there was trepidation. The swallowing, all-consuming fear of getting your heart broken, of ending up right back where he had started, staring at photographs, teary eyed and exhausted, willing the printed image to reach out and give him something back.

Bucky battled with fear. There was something feral in the back of his head begging him to run. It told him that he was to warm, everything was too soft, these walls were too close. Steve was too good. Too good for him, too good to be ruined by the mess that seemed to follow Bucky wherever he stepped.

“The bathroom is down the hall. The shower is electric; you don’t need to worry about running out of hot water. What we would’ve done to have that in 1940, huh? You used to scowl at me for hours if the water turned cold while you still had shampoo in your hair,” Steve smiled clearing his throat and tapping Bucky’s shoulder affectionately.

Bucky worked instinctively, grabbing the hand by the wrist and holding it away from any weak point he had exposed. His neck, his hair, his face, anything graspable.

“Sorry, Buck. I should’ve asked,” Steve apologised quietly.

Bucky stood silently, still and unmoving in the honey-coloured light of the living room.

“Can I have my hand back?” Steve asked apprehensively, “I use it a fair bit.”  


Bucky nodded hurriedly, releasing his grip and staring at the floor.

“I didn’t mean to,” He whispered, “Sorry if that hurt.”

Steve shook his head dismissively.

“Nah,” He shrugged, “I’ve put up with worse.”

Bucky let out the breath he had been holding and made his way down the hall, starting up the shower before stripping down to his underwear and sitting on the edge of the bathtub. The sound of the water ushered every other sound out of the room. Steve’s subtle movements down the hall, the muffled sounds of police cars and people from outside the apartment, everything took its leave so that he might be alone with his own thoughts. Bucky reminded himself that he and his thoughts had a penchant for not getting along, but he appreciated the stillness nonetheless.

He undressed completely before standing under the spray. The heat immediately curled through his skin, sickeningly deep and penetrating. As if the phantom heat were coiling through his ribs, his breathing spiked.

Then the pain.

Blinding him as it coursed through his left side, it radiated from his shoulder, up to his jaw and down his flank. He lowered himself to his knees, dropping to the bathroom floor, feeling the room grey at the edges and the solid tile beneath his feet become fluid and malleable. With numb hands he pulled a towel around his waist and lay back flat on the floor. He willed his breathing to slow. The pain had stopped, the fear had not.

He eased himself back up, turning the shower as cold as it could go before tentatively climbing back in. The frigid water hit his back and, like a shot of tranquilisers, his breathing ceased its rapid control of his chest.

He rubbed soap through his hair, untangling it with his fingers and washed himself as best as he could one-handed, any movement from his left side threatening to make the pain start up again. The thought of unlocking the arm completely, removing it from its metal brackets and just using his right came to him, but he shoved it away. He did not want to be any more compromised than he already was.

  



End file.
